Migration and Marriage in Asian Contexts by Zheng Mu Wei-Jun Jean Yeung

Author:Zheng Mu, Wei-Jun Jean Yeung [Zheng Mu, Wei-Jun Jean Yeung]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781000508253
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 59382738
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion and discussion

Similar to South Korea and other East Asian countries, Taiwan has been experiencing increasingly diverse ethnic composition due to a rapid increase of cross-border marriages, predominantly involving female immigrants. The immigrant brides, especially those from Southeast Asia, usually migrate to the host society alone, marry husbands they hardly know, and live with their husband’s family right after arrival, without any choice. Their experiences are different from voluntary immigrants who travel overseas to seek better opportunities. The former are forced to assimilate into the host culture.

Understanding the mechanism affecting the psychological well-being of female marriage immigrants in Taiwan is crucial. Marriage immigrants, accounting for about 2% of the national population, have given birth to over 380,000 children since 1998. The psychological well-being of immigrant brides also directly affects the well-being of their offspring and that of the national population indirectly.

The present study taking a bottom-up approach reveals that economic and acculturative factors are associated with the psychological well-being of immigrant brides in Taiwan. First, female marriage immigrants employed for pay or in a family business were unhappier than those being homemakers were. Based on the perspective of power dynamics within family, Hurh and Kim (1990) and Ferree (1979) explain that without the rearrangement of the within-family division of labour, employment outside the home for immigrant brides means additional work, which burdens them with a double load and impairs their psychological well-being. Second, family income is one of the most influential variables in the present research found to be a protective factor for immigrant brides. Family income not only represents the socioeconomic status of an individual but also is associated with his/her real consumption power. Although the families of immigrant brides in Taiwan were poorer than the general population, family income still significantly contributed to the happiness of female marriage immigrants. Meanwhile, the results illustrate that the positive effect of family income on the happiness of immigrant brides perhaps was linear. This perhaps is because that the family income of immigrant brides is generally lower than the national average family income in Taiwan.

This study additionally probes the effects of three acculturative factors, length of residency, social networks for dealing with difficulties, and perception of friendliness, on the happiness of female immigrants in cross-border marriages. Our results, showing that immigrant brides staying longer than 2 years reported worse psychological well-being than the newcomers arriving in Taiwan within the past two years. We argue that with a longer stay in Taiwan, the immigrant brides experienced more unexpected difficulties and hardships. Immigrant brides may have started their life in Taiwan as happy new brides with an expectation of a better and easier life than that in their homeland. However, they gradually understood that the economic situation of their husbands’ families was not as good as they had expected. Hopes of improving the economic status or life standards of their native families through the cross-border marriage were dashed. Meanwhile, they had to face economic hardships and other issues which local Taiwanese were also encountering

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